moonspinner55
The sequel nobody asked for. Anna Chlumsky reprises her role of preteen Vada Sultenfuss from 1991's "My Girl", an inquisitive Pennsylvania schoolgirl who, spurred on by an English class writing assignment, flies to Los Angeles by herself to hopefully learn more about her late mother--a budding actress who died in childbirth--from her uncle. Sloppy, excruciatingly thin coming-of-age nonsense, unconvincingly set in the 1970s, hopes to pick up the slack (and wow sixth-grade girls) by introducing shaggy-haired Austin O'Brien as a potential love-interest for Chlumsky's Vada (her previous puppy love amour, Macaulay Culkin, having expired in the first installment). But the eyeball-rolling O'Brien and the judgmental, condescending Chlumsky are a dismaying pair--neither child has a lot on their mind--while the period rock songs on the soundtrack (some of them generic) fail to provide the nostalgic lift intended. * from ****
carmenjonze-1
If you want to know what kind of music white people listened to in 1974, this is the movie for you. But you'll have to listen to a lot of flutes and violins, too (see my remarks on My Girl 1 for the reference).Indulgent admission: I approached My Girl 2 with cynicism and annoyance, having just viewed its predecessor. But as an adoptee preparing to finally set upon a search for my birthmother, My Girl 2 made me look, with its theme of searching for mother.Put another way, anything I liked about My Girl 2 had nothing whatsoever to do with My Girl 2, but relating to a protagonist who asks, like so many adoptees, "who's my mama"? And if there are home movies of my mom in an acting troupe, I'll be sure to make my own movie about it.People are listless. Movies should not be listless. My Girl 2 (like My Girl 1) is just...listless.Avoid unless you're a complete sap who's comforted by a series of small annoyances.
ppamjo2
I think that this was a good movie... Vada chooses to write a report about someone that they never met. She decides to do a report on her Mom. Her mom was an aspiring actress.. Vada ventures out to California to find out all about her Mother..She stayed with her uncle and his girlfriend who have a young son named Nick... Personally I thought Nick was kind of a jerk.I think that this is such a great story. Vada can now grow up knowing that her mom was special to a lot of people. The scene with Jeffery Pomeroy was so good... He told Vada that he was glad that her Mom found someone that would love her and that he was glad when she was born...Sure the story may not sit well with some people, but I thought that it was great. I know if I never met my Mom, I sure would like to know all about her...I would give this film a chance...
Penny
I've seen this movie several times, and read the other comments to see if another viewer would enlighten me as to why this movie was so "bad", but the negative reviewers were hard-pressed to find specific examples -- all people said was "it's a sequel, so it's pointless, they shouldn't have made it, THEREFORE it must be bad." If you ask me, that's definitely jumping to conclusions; it's very easy to write a review like that without ever having seen the movie at all.What's interesting about this movie is, while it is a sequel, unlike most sequels, it just as easily could stand on its own -- viewers need not have seen My Girl before seeing My Girl 2. The setting is, for the most part, completely different (from funeral home in Pennsylvania to sunny California). Vada's character, which, in the first movie, had been a neurotic hypochondriac, has "recovered" and now is more or less a normal teenager. Shelley (Jamie Lee Curtis) has been accepted into the family and is now just a loving stepmother -- and she plays a minor role in the film, anyway, as most of the film concerns Vada away from home -- and thus an entirely different cast of new characters were introduced. Instead of looking at this film as a sequel, one could easily see it as a 13-year-old girl attempting to find out more about the mother she never knew. I wouldn't exactly call that contrived, and the movie didn't incessantly "repeat" themes or jokes (or make more than a reference or two) to the first movie.*SOME SPOILERS*What I came away with, though, was that the story line didn't feel strong enough to sustain the movie. Yes, it was enjoyable, but there weren't a lot of twists and turns to move the main story forward -- a lot of the major points of conflict were found in the subplots, actually -- the relationship between Vada's uncle (who makes a cameo in the first movie, and whose character is expanded here) and his fiancée; the relationship between Vada and Nick (which is slightly disturbing considering he's going to be her cousin); the news of Shelley's pregnancy, etc. The bulk of the main story, after Vada arrives in California, consists of her talking to people somewhat matter-of-factly; she never really hits any "dead ends" or runs into any problems until near the end when Vada finds out about her mother's first husband. For some reason, though, that doesn't feel much like a satisfying climax, because nothing really built up to it or "prepared" the audience for it. On the other hand, the following scene, where Vada gets to "see" her mother for the first time (on film), really arouses the sentimental pathos so characteristic of the first movie. However, I wonder what is implied by the final scene -- where Vada flies home to be with her father and Shelley and the new baby and sings the song her mother sang in the film -- is it saying that although Vada grew up without a mother, she can play "mother" to this child? But the child already has a mother (and not Vada's mother). There is no real coming-of-age in this movie, either, as might be expected in a film with a thin plot -- possibly because Vada is pretty sane in this film, and there aren't many more of her values one can alter.Somehow, overall, the film manages to come off as enjoyable, though, if maybe just for the audience's curiosity about the mysterious half of Vada's family she knew little about. I can't quite classify it as a "good film", but even with all the little things I listed above I can't exactly classify it as a "bad" film, either. It follows a different sort of formula than the first movie, so I don't even feel like seeing if it measures up to the original is a fair point of comparison. It's different -- let's just leave it at that.
